For European allies of the United States, President Trump’s White House is structured like a court: the gilded Oval Office a place for advisers, pals and courtiers, all awaiting the decrees of the president.

Mr. Trump is the ultimate decision maker, and far from a predictable one. So in the first three months of this Trump presidency, getting through to the president himself is the Europeans’ goal. Some have succeeded, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who is expected to meet him at the White House on Thursday.

What is most confusing, European officials say, is that the most efficient interlocutors are not traditional diplomats working through institutions, but special envoys and advisers like Elon Musk. And it is never quite clear whether the messages get through to Mr. Trump, even if he is more likely to trust an old friend like Steve Witkoff, whom he has installed as a foreign policy negotiator, over the civil servants he disdains.

“Everyone in D.C. says you have to talk to Trump directly,” a senior European official said.

The European officials said they found Trump officials polite but consumed with fulfilling the president’s wishes and said they expressed little interest in their allies.

For example, American officials gave no heads up to key European nations about renewed talks last Saturday with Iran over its nuclear program, two European officials said. The European countries — Britain, France and Germany — were signatories to the 2015 nuclear agreement that the president later left, had been the instigators and intermediaries for that deal and have been trying themselves to advance negotiations on a new one.

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China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and his subordinates are mounting a diplomatic full court press to try to persuade other countries not to cave to pressure from the Trump administration on tariffs, hoping to show that China will not be isolated in the trade war.

In recent days, China’s commerce minister has held a video call with the European Union’s top trade official, pushing for closer cooperation. Chinese diplomats have been contacting officials in Tokyo and Seoul. And Mr. Xi landed in Vietnam and Malaysia on state visits this week where he was greeted with carefully choreographed crowds of supporters.

At stake for Mr. Xi are the fate of the global trading system that propelled China’s rise as the world’s manufacturing powerhouse, as well as access to markets for many Chinese exports now that the United States has sought to cut them off with debilitating tariffs.

The outreach is also a test of China’s status as a global power in the face of what Beijing sees as an effort by Washington to contain and suppress its key rival. China has fought back against the Trump administration with its own eye-watering tariffs on U.S. goods, as well as restrictions on the export of some rare earth minerals and magnets that are vital for assembling cars, missiles and drones.

To that end, Mr. Xi has tried to assemble a broader coalition to his side — hoping to keep countries from slapping tariffs of their own on Chinese products, or giving in to Washington’s demands to decouple from Chinese manufacturing.

As South Korea prepares for trade talks with the United States next week, it thinks it has a way to appeal directly to President Trump: through its thriving shipbuilding industry.

A longstanding American ally, South Korea is also the world’s second-largest shipbuilder after China. This prowess, officials from Seoul will argue, can help Mr. Trump with his goal of reviving America’s maritime industry. In exchange, they hope to mitigate the punishing 25 percent tariff Mr. Trump plans to impose on South Korean exports like Hyundai and Kia cars, steel and aluminum, and LG dishwashers.

Both sides have said that Mr. Trump wants shipbuilding to be part of a new trade deal between the two countries. A new agreement ​is also likely to include large purchases of American liquefied natural gas by South Korea to help lower its trade surplus with the United States.

But “since President Trump and his administration have expressed big interest in cooperation in shipbuilding, it will become a very important negotiating card for us,” South Korea’s trade and industry minister, Ahn Duk-geun, told Parliament last week.

South Korea’s finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, has said he hopes to meet with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Washington next week. Like many smaller nations, South Korea has not pushed back at Mr. Trump​ with its own retaliatory duties. Unlike China and Europe, it has instead sought talks with Mr. Trump.

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Luciano Sampietro lifted a three-foot aluminum pipe to his lips and blew, sending a blow dart laced with sedatives, muscle relaxers and painkillers toward the world’s largest rodent, lounging near an artificial pond.

The veterinarian’s target, a roughly 110-pound alpha male capybara, was hit in the hind leg. Mr. Sampietro fired again and struck a female. Within 15 minutes, workers dressed in the tan outfits of safari guides scooped up the sleeping patients.

But they were too late: The female was already pregnant. So they injected the male with a drug designed to stop him from impregnating any more.

Yes, in the wealthy suburbs of Buenos Aires, they are sterilizing the capybaras.

The rotund, laid-back, dog-sized rodents native to South America have recently become a darling of the modern internet. They have catapulted to the top of the unofficial adorable animal rankings via countless videos showing them mellow, plump and perfectly happy to let monkeys and ducks ride on their backs. Their image adorns backpacks and stuffed animals, and in Tokyo, tourists pay premiums to feed them carrots at capybara cafes.

Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions.

Mr. Trump made his decision after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel in seeking to set back Iran’s ability to build a bomb, at a time when Iran has been weakened militarily and economically.

The debate highlighted fault lines between historically hawkish American cabinet officials and other aides more skeptical that a military assault on Iran could destroy the country’s nuclear ambitions and avoid a larger war. It resulted in a rough consensus, for now, against military action, with Iran signaling a willingness to negotiate.

Israeli officials had recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites in May. They were prepared to carry them out, and at times were optimistic that the United States would sign off. The goal of the proposals, according to officials briefed on them, was to set back Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon by a year or more.

Almost all of the plans would have required U.S. help not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful, making the United States a central part of the attack itself.

For now, Mr. Trump has chosen diplomacy over military action. In his first term, he tore up the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration. But in his second term, eager to avoid being sucked into another war in the Middle East, he has opened negotiations with Tehran, giving it a deadline of just a few months to negotiate a deal over its nuclear program.

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump informed Israel of his decision that the United States would not support an attack. He discussed it with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when Mr. Netanyahu visited Washington last week, using an Oval Office meeting to announce that the United States was beginning talks with Iran.

In a statement delivered in Hebrew after the meeting, Mr. Netanyahu said that an agreement with Iran would work only if it allowed the signers to “go in, blow up the facilities, dismantle all the equipment, under American supervision with American execution.”

This article is based on conversations with multiple officials briefed on Israel’s secret military plans and confidential discussions inside the Trump administration. Most of the people interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.

Israel has long planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, rehearsing bombing runs and calculating how much damage it could do with or without American help.

But support within the Israeli government for a strike grew after Iran suffered a string of setbacks last year.

In attacks on Israel in April, most of Iran’s ballistic missiles were unable to penetrate American and Israeli defenses. Hezbollah, Iran’s key ally, was decimated by an Israeli military campaign last year. The subsequent fall of the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria eliminated a Hezbollah and Tehran ally and cut off a prime route of weapons smuggling from Iran.

Air defense systems in Iran and Syria were also destroyed, along with the facilities that Iran uses to make missile fuel, crippling the country’s ability to produce new missiles for some time.

Initially, at the behest of Mr. Netanyahu, senior Israeli officials updated their American counterparts on a plan that would have combined an Israeli commando raid on underground nuclear sites with a bombing campaign, an effort that the Israelis hoped would involve American aircraft.

But Israeli military officials said the commando operation would not be ready until October. Mr. Netanyahu wanted it carried out more quickly. Israeli officials began shifting to a proposal for an extended bombing campaign that would have also required American assistance, according to officials briefed on the plan.

Some American officials were at least initially more open to considering the Israeli plans. Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, both discussed how the United States could potentially support an Israeli attack, if Mr. Trump backed the plan, according to officials briefed on the discussions.

With the United States intensifying its war against the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, General Kurilla, with the blessing of the White House, began moving military equipment to the Middle East. A second aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, is now in the Arabian Sea, joining the carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.

The United States also moved two Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, known as a THAAD, to the Middle East.

Around a half-dozen B-2 bombers capable of carrying 30,000-pound bombs essential to destroying Iran’s underground nuclear program were dispatched to Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean.

Moving additional fighter aircraft to the region, potentially to a base in Israel, was also considered.

All of the equipment could be used for strikes against the Houthis — whom the United States has been attacking since March 15 in an effort to halt their strikes against shipping vessels in the Red Sea. But U.S. officials said privately that the weaponry was also part of the planning for potentially supporting Israel in a conflict with Iran.

Even if the United States decided not to authorize the aircraft to take part in a strike on Iran, Israel would know that the American fighters were available to defend against attacks by an Iranian ally.

There were signs that Mr. Trump was open to U.S. support for Israeli military action against Iran. The United States has long accused Iran of giving the Houthis weapons and intelligence, and of exercising at least a degree of control over the group. On March 17, as Mr. Trump warned the Houthis in Yemen to stop their attacks, he also called out Iran, saying that it was in control of the Houthis.

“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post, adding, “IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”

There were many reasons that Israeli officials expected Mr. Trump to take an aggressive line on Iran. In 2020, he ordered the killing of Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s most elite military unit. And Iran sought to hire hit men to assassinate Mr. Trump during last year’s presidential campaign, according to a Justice Department indictment.

But inside the Trump administration, some officials were becoming skeptical of the Israeli plan.

In a meeting this month — one of several discussions about the Israeli plan — Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, presented a new intelligence assessment that said the buildup of American weaponry could potentially spark a wider conflict with Iran that the United States did not want.

A range of officials echoed Ms. Gabbard’s concerns in the various meetings. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; and Vice President JD Vance all voiced doubts about the attack.

Even Mr. Waltz, frequently one of the most hawkish voices on Iran, was skeptical that Israel’s plan could succeed without substantial American assistance.

The recent meetings came shortly after the Iranians said that they were open to indirect talks — communications through an intermediary. In March, Mr. Trump had sent a letter offering direct talks with Iran, an overture that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had appeared to reject. But on March 28, a senior Iranian official sent a letter back signaling openness to indirect talks.

There is still significant debate within Mr. Trump’s team about what kind of agreement with Iran would be acceptable. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals about what kind of deal it wants, and what the consequences for Iran would be if it failed to agree.

In one discussion, Mr. Vance, with support from others, argued that Mr. Trump had a unique opportunity to make a deal.

If the talks failed, Mr. Trump could then support an Israeli attack, Mr. Vance said, according to administration officials.

During a visit to Israel earlier this month, General Kurilla told officials there that the White House wanted to put the plan to attack the nuclear facility on hold.

Mr. Netanyahu called Mr. Trump on April 3. According to Israeli officials, Mr. Trump told Mr. Netanyahu that he did not want to discuss Iran plans on the phone. But he invited Mr. Netanyahu to come to the White House.

Mr. Netanyahu arrived in Washington on April 7. While the trip was presented as an opportunity for him to argue against Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the most important discussion for the Israelis was their planned strike on Iran.

But while Mr. Netanyahu was still at the White House, Mr. Trump publicly announced the talks with Iran.

In private discussions, Mr. Trump made clear to Mr. Netanyahu that he would not provide American support for an Israeli attack in May while the negotiations were playing out, according to officials briefed on the discussions.

The next day, Mr. Trump suggested that an Israeli military strike against Iran remained an option. “If it requires military, we’re going to have military,” Mr. Trump said. “Israel will, obviously, be the leader of that.”

After Mr. Netanyahu’s visit, Mr. Trump assigned John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, to travel to Jerusalem. Last Wednesday, Mr. Ratcliffe met with Mr. Netanyahu and David Barnea, the head of the Mossad spy agency, to discuss various options for dealing with Iran.

In addition to talks and strikes, other options were discussed, including covert Israeli operations conducted with U.S. support and more aggressive sanctions enforcement, according to a person briefed on Mr. Ratcliffe’s visit.

Brian Hughes, a National Security Council spokesman, said the administration’s “entire national security leadership team” was committed to Mr. Trump’s Iran policy and efforts “to ensure peace and stability in the Middle East.”

“President Trump has been clear: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and all options remain on the table,” Mr. Hughes said. “The president has authorized direct and indirect discussions with Iran to make this point clear. But he’s also made clear this cannot go on indefinitely.”

The White House and the C.I.A. did not respond to requests for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence referred questions to the National Security Council. The Defense Department declined to comment. Mr. Netanyahu’s office and the Israel Defense Forces also declined to comment.

In pressing Mr. Trump to join in an attack, Mr. Netanyahu was replaying a debate he has had with American presidents over nearly two decades.

Blocked by his American counterparts, Mr. Netanyahu has instead focused on covert sabotage operations against specific facilities and assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. While those efforts may have slowed the program, it is now closer than it has ever been to being able to produce six or more nuclear weapons in a matter of months or a year.

American officials have long said that Israel, acting alone, could not do significant enough damage to Iranian nuclear sites with only a bombing campaign. Israel has long sought America’s largest conventional bomb — a 30,000-pound bunker buster, which could do significant damage to key Iranian nuclear sites beneath mountains.

Israel considered various options for the May strike, many of which it discussed with American officials.

Mr. Netanyahu initially pushed for an option that would have combined airstrikes with commando raids. The plan would have been a far more ambitious version of an operation Israel carried out last September, when Israeli forces flew by helicopter into Syria to destroy an underground bunker used to build missiles for Hezbollah.

In that operation, Israel used airstrikes to take out guard posts and air defense sites. Commandos then rappelled to the ground. The teams of fighters, armed with explosives and small arms, infiltrated the underground facility and set explosives to destroy key equipment for making the weaponry.

But American officials were concerned that only some of Iran’s key facilities could be taken out by commandos. Iran’s most highly enriched uranium, close to bomb grade, is hidden around the country at multiple sites.

To be successful, Israeli officials wanted American planes to conduct airstrikes, protecting the commando teams on the ground.

But even if U.S. assistance was forthcoming, Israeli military commanders said that such an operation would take months to plan. That presented problems. With General Kurilla’s duty tour expected to conclude in the next few months, Israeli and American officials wanted to develop a plan that could be carried out while he was still in command.

And Mr. Netanyahu wanted to move fast.

After shelving the commando idea, Israeli and American officials began discussing a plan for an extensive bombing campaign that would have started in early May and lasted more than a week. An Israeli strike last year had already destroyed Iran’s Russian-made S-300 air defense systems. The bombing campaign would have had to begin with striking remaining air defense systems, allowing Israeli fighters to have a clearer path to hitting the nuclear sites.

Any Israeli attack on nuclear sites would prompt a new Iranian missile barrage against Israel that would require American assistance to rebuff.

Senior Iranian officials, from the president to the head of the armed forces and foreign minister, have said that Iran would defend itself if attacked by Israel or the United States.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the head of Iran’s Armed Forces, said in a speech on April 6 that Iran did not want war and wanted to resolve the standoff with the United States through diplomacy. But he warned: “Our response to any attack on the Islamic Republic’s sovereignty will be forceful and consequential.”

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

Despite mixed messages from the Trump administration over whether it wants Iran to completely dismantle its nuclear program, Iranian officials said on Wednesday that they would keep talking to U.S. officials and focus on what America says in private during negotiations.

The Iranian statements came as the country’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, would hold a second round of talks in Rome on Saturday. The White House did not immediately confirm the venue.

The two officials met last Saturday in Oman for a combination of indirect and direct talks that lasted more than two hours. Afterward, both sides described the meetings as constructive.

Mr. Araghchi told Iranian news media on Wednesday that the shifting messages from Washington in recent days, which moved from limiting Iran’s nuclear program to dismantling it completely, were “not helpful,” but that he would “wait to be informed on their real position during negotiations.”

“We will participate in the negotiations calmly and coolly without being influenced by any faction,” Mr. Araghchi said on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday, according to a video. He added that Iran’s nuclear enrichment for peaceful energy was “real and genuine and we are ready to build trust regarding potential concerns, but the issue of enrichment is nonnegotiable.”

Divisions have emerged within Mr. Trump’s inner circle about what exactly the United States is demanding from Iran in the talks. Mr. Trump has said that he does not want Tehran to weaponize its program and obtain a nuclear bomb. He favored negotiating a deal after months of internal debate over whether to pursue diplomacy or support Israel’s plan to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month in order to hobble Tehran’s ability to build a bomb, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions.

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Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy will become the latest in a line of European leaders to flock to Washington with the goal of currying favor and improving relations with President Trump.

But Ms. Meloni’s trip this week has stirred more hopes — and fears — than the visits of some earlier European leaders to the White House because of the unique position she holds on the continent.

Her right-wing background has long positioned her as a potential ally of Mr. Trump’s, and she was invited to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration, unlike other European leaders. Those credentials have helped stoke speculation that Ms. Meloni could visit the White House with an Italy-first approach, looking to strike deals for her country and threatening to undermine European unity.

But many diplomats and officials push back on such concerns, in part because Ms. Meloni has made a name for herself in recent months as a collaborative player on the European stage.

To Ms. Meloni’s fans, this is a moment ripe with opportunity. To others, it is an important test of whether she can use her affinity with Mr. Trump to help Italy, and Europe.

“Italy will find out how much it can claim a special relationship with the United States,” said Giovanni Orsina, the head of the political science department at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

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Siding with the Trump administration, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said on Monday that he would not send back a Salvadoran migrant, whom the U.S. authorities deported from Maryland in error last month, an expulsion that set off a legal battle that has reached the Supreme Court.

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power,” Mr. Bukele said, sitting in the Oval Office beside a beaming President Trump.

Latin America experts scoffed at the idea that Mr. Bukele, whose government has ordered mass arrests and seized control of the country’s courts, would suggest he could not return one man — if he wanted to.

“I have no words,” said Ana María Méndez Dardón, the Central America director at the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group. “If he has any remaining commitment to democratic norms, he has an obligation to resolve this case.”

A federal judge in Maryland ordered the return of the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, to the United States, a decision that the Supreme Court unanimously upheld last week.

In refusing to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, Mr. Bukele is falling in line with the Trump administration and its deportation plans, helping to cement a strategy for dealing with legal challenges. The administration is arguing that deportees to El Salvador belong to terrorist gangs — and that after it turns the men over to a sovereign foreign nation, it has no right to interfere.

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